When the US entered WW2, they began by invading Northern Africa. 1) the Germans didn’t value the location (like they did France or Russia), so the resistance they put up was relatively minimal. 2) the US also wanted to secure the oil fields there, recognizing their importance for a sustainable supply chain across the Atlantic. Again – another error on the Germans….
Anyway, the jeeps at the time didn’t have windshields. Just, because they didn’t. When the Germans saw this, they started stringing up barb wire randomly across roads at neck level, relative to the driver / passengers. It worked.
When my Grandpa (repair welder and anti-aircraft gunner in the navy) heard the reports, he traded some cheese cloth he was given (the cheese went bad by the time he got it) with local camel jockies for scrap metal. He then welded posts / guards onto the front of the jeeps in his spare time.
Word has it he was credited for saving a bunch of lives.
“Operation Bertram” was a secretive operation, from the WW2 battlefields of North Africa, that helped turn the tide of war in favor of our British Allies.
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Back in 1942, Allied forces were battling and loosing to the famous German commander Erwin Rommel known as the “Desert Fox”.
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German soldiers inspect nocked out British M-3 Grant tank near El Alamein 1942.
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That was all before the second battle of El Alamein, with the launch of Op. Bertram and its creation of the “Middle East School of Camouflage” in the west African desert near Cairo, Egypt.
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Good vs Bad Intel
This the story of Operation Bertram.
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The operation’s goal was to create deception in 2-way.
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First, they were built multiple fake “dummy” tanks.
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This helped fool the Nazis into thinking that a built-up, amassed number of tanks in an area would indicate where an attack would come from.
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Above is a British dummy “Sherman” tank.
Below is a U.S. inflatable “Sherman” tank.
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Operation Bertram helped create the U.S. “Ghost Army” which also focused on building decoys.
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Operation Bertram’s second goal was to hide their actual/real tank numbers and locations.
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This lead to the creation of “Sunshield” canopies which concealed the real tanks as mere supply vehicles.
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In total, 722 of these box-shaped canopies were built.
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The simple design could fit on different types of tanks. For example, above is a “Matilda II” tank and below is an M-3 “Grant” tank (rear view) and 2-pics down is a A9 Cruiser “Mark I” Tank.
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After British/Allies’ victory at the battle of El Alamein, a captured German Panzerarmee general Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma told British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery that he had believed the Allies had at least one more armored division than they did…
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…And that the attack would be in the South.
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Dummy above/Real tank below.
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Rommel’s stand-in, General Georg Stumme, thought the attack would not begin for several weeks.
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Winston Churchill’s quote on the success of Operation Bertram:
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“By a marvelous system of camouflage, complete tactical surprise was achieved in the desert. The 10th Corps, which he had seen from the air exercising fifty miles in the rear, moved silently away in the night, but leaving an exact simulacrum of its tanks where it had been, and proceeded to its points of attack.” (Winston Churchill, 1942)
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El Alamein was the first time Churchill could tell his country that Britain beat the Germans in a major battle. At the time, politically the war was wearing on the country…as in, the U.K. could have decided to “seek peace” with Germany just as America was entering WW2. It was the turning point in which British at home and on the battlefield finally realized that they could defeat Hitler. Victory at El Alamein was a history changing event.
Thank you to our U.K. Allies.
-Rick
“Operation Bertram” was a secretive operation, from your WW2 battlefields of North Africa, that helped turn the wave of war in favor of our Language Allies.
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